Rory O’Neill was among those honoured at this year’s People of the Year Awards. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the annual ceremony was presented by Gráinne Seoige and broadcast live on RTÉ One television from Dublin’s Citywest Hotel last Saturday night. Rory was presented with his award by Stephen Fry.

THE INCREDIBLE story of Alan Turing is almost impossible to believe. This man invented the computer and, with a small team, ended WWII two years earlier than was thought possible, and in doing so saved the lives of 14,000,000 people.

Paul Potts, the tenor who shot to prominence in 2007 with his surprise pitch perfect rendition of Puccini's famous ‘Nessun Dorma’ on Britain's Got Talent, is to perform in the Royal Theatre, Castlebar, tomorrow (Saturday) night.

The agricultural crisis of 1879, and growing civic unrest, prompted the Society of Friends in England to send James Hack Tuke to the west to inquire into conditions and to distribute relief. Tuke, the son of a well-to-do tea and coffee merchant family in York, England, published his observations in Irish Distress and its Remedies: A visit to Donegal and Connaught in the spring of 1880. In clear-cut language he highlighted the widespread distress and destitution at a time when the British government questioned the extent of the crisis.

Galway Diary received the following statement from Adrian Martyn (great-great-great grandnephew of Peter Doherty, senior), who was shot dead at Carrigan, near Craughwell village on the night of November 2 1881. I am pleased to carry Adrian’s clarification: